Defendant in ’84 Slayings Testifies

Josif Jurcoane testified Wednesday that fear of being wrongly accused of a double homicide made him flee to Mexico 18 years ago and then fabricate a story about a killer nicknamed “El Loco� to avoid extradition last year.

But Jurcoane, 52, steadfastly denied during his murder trial that he was the triggerman in the July 4, 1984, slayings of Antelope Valley rancher Lloyd William Bryden, 67, and Bryden’s live-in girlfriend, Alice B. McCannel, 39.

Prosecutors, who are seeking life imprisonment without parole, say Jurcoane was prompted to violence by an argument between his wife and McCannel over the ownership of livestock.

Defense attorney Arnold M. Notkoff told Judge Shari K. Silver he had advised his client not to take the witness stand. But Jurcoane insisted on doing so, and once on the stand he wavered over the details of his story.

Under questioning by Notkoff, Jurcoane said he was at a Palmdale bar when he heard about a slaying at the ranch where he had worked as the manager until three weeks earlier. He said he fled to Tijuana because he had been fired after an argument with Bryden over job responsibilities.

Jurcoane, speaking through an interpreter, told the seven-woman, five-man jury in San Fernando Superior Court that he knew he was going to be accused.

After his arrest in Mexico, Jurcoane testified, he lied to Mexican immigration official Sonia Luz Jimenez-Vargas about seeing a man, whom he knew only as El Loco, shoot the ranchers to death with a 12-gauge shotgun that belonged to Jurcoane. He said he thought the story would go no further than the official’s files.

Jimenez-Vargas testified earlier in the trial about her interview with Jurcoane, which resulted in his extradition.

Under cross-examination by prosecutor Rouman Ebrahim, Jurcoane denied owning the shotgun thought to be the murder weapon and denied knowing anyone named El Loco. He then testified he could not remember whether he told Jimenez-Vargas that he witnessed the slayings.

“Did you ever consider telling the truth ... instead of making up a story?� Ebrahim asked.

“No,� Jurcoane said.

Notkoff called two witnesses to answer prosecution testimony last week by Jurcoane’s 22-year-old daughter, Josephine, who was 4 at the time of the killings. She told the jury she heard gunshots and then saw her father return home and hastily pack his clothes before vanishing on the day her two neighbors were slain. The family lived in a trailer adjoining Bryden’s 450-acre Mountain Brook Ranch near Palmdale.

During brief testimony, Jurcoane’s son, David, 20, said his sister never mentioned hearing shots or seeing her father grab clothing and hastily depart after the slayings.

Josephine Jurcoane “didn’t come forward until nine or 10 months after her father was arrested,� Notkoff told the court.

Psychologist Nancy Kaser-Boyd testified that the memory of a 4-year-old “is rather unreliable.� Under questioning by the prosecutor, she acknowledged that a “traumatic experience� such as the abrupt disappearance of a parent is an event that could accurately stick in a child’s memory.

Closing arguments are expected to be heard today.